What about the oldies?

[Johan van Zyl]

I went to Kimberley (South Africa) over the weekend. This is about 200 km from where I live. There, in a relatively small M.O.T.H. museum, I came across three standard size khukuries. One I immediately recognised as a new SN1 without scabbard. It had a horn handle. The other two were in their scabbards, fixed to the plaque with copper wire. Both had horn handles, but the horn was not jet black like the SN1, but had natural grey patterns on them. One of these knives had not merely the karda and chakmak, but a whole collection of little knives bristling in their pouches. Interesting fact: these three khukuries were the first I saw with my own eyes outside of my own small collection.

Now a question: these last mentioned two khukuries were oldies. By "oldie" I mean not distributed recently by GH or HI (I assume GH and HI have always sold new originals). Are there shops in the U.S. where one can buy oldies? I'll put the question differently: how would one go about getting hold of oldies? Put even more differently: should there not be hundreds upon hundreds of genuine WWI and WWII khukuries lying about?

Another question: if you should go into the hills of Nepal and visit the ordinary folk there, approximately how old might one expect the oldest khukuri in day-to-day use to be?

(Maybe these queries should go to the "stupid question" section?!)

 

[Craig Gottlieb]

Funny you should bring this up - I just sent the "order" over to Nepal to be on the lookout for old khukuris - a standing order to ship any he finds here with our shipments. It'll be a new offering we'll start doing. They won't be GH khukuris with guarantees, but they WILL be guaranteed to be genuine antiques.

As for the "finding old ones in the hills" I'd guess that once a normal working khukuri gets too old (i.e. it breaks), they recycle it into something else and buy a new one. So chances of finding collectable antiques is probably pretty uncommon. This is just speculation, though.

And remember: regarding service weapons - they were inventoried armory items, and were probably retained quite often (at least that's the way it goes now).

If anybody is interested in used SN1s, I may be able to get some with earlier dates than the 1990s. I'll have to see, but it's a good question to pose to Lalit.

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Craig Gottlieb
Gurkha House
Blade Forums Sponsor

 

[Chris S.]

Johan,

Or you could just keep checking E-bay, Craig has a khukuri search link for E-bay at his site. However, I know you have a preference for dealing local.

I'd bet you a few loaves that somewhere in S.A. there's a well travelled war vet with a couple vintage khukuris sitting in his closet, and he doesn't know that there's somebody out there who'd appreciate them. The challenge is finding him.

Chris

 

[Lt. Dan]

Good posts, guys. This whole idea of decommissioned SN1's and now other oldies has really got my attention. There is really great potintial here.

CRAIG, will you keep us posted on all such developments, regardless of direction?